


To the Utmost

by auselysium



Category: Coronation Street
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8469883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: Todd misses Billy while he's in Kenya on the charity trip and has more than one reason to be relieved when he comes home.





	

Todd has always felt his emotions very keenly.

  
While Karl called him “intense”, his mum called him “sensitive” and Jason, a “drama queen”, Todd has lived his life with the reality of feelings experienced to the utmost.

  
Todd hadn’t just felt uneasy about the impact of coming out but fearful trepidation.

  
He hadn’t just felt heartbreak when Sam had left him, but desolate anguish.

  
And now, he doesn’t just miss Billy but feels his absence as if half of himself had boarded that plane and flown to Kenya, too. Hollow, deflated. His fingertips ache for the brush of Billy’s skin. His lungs fill only part way. It’s a kind of insanity, this feeling of emptiness, muting any and all other feelings with the only cure, Billy’s return.

  
Rural Africa doesn’t afford many opportunities for contact. Billy had sent him several texts upon his arrival in Nairobi and he’d found a phone while at dinner with one of the charity’s directors but that had been over a week ago. Since then, Todd had been on his own.

  
And the timing couldn’t really be worse, either. With the greed in Vinny’s eyes growing to a fever pitch, Todd could almost stomach what he was doing with Billy by his side.

  
Good, honest, decent Billy. If he could love Todd than perhaps he wasn’t the devious, double-crossing cad he thought himself to be. But with Billy gone these past two weeks, Todd has felt his resolve falter. The curl of self-disgust twisting up his spine like some malicious disease. Contorting him with the claustrophobic guilt. The ensnared, binding immorality.

  
The trip had almost not happened at all when, with Billy positively buzzing with excitement next to him in bed the night before his journey, Todd’s easily misplaced ethics, and his promise not to lie to Billy any longer, had finally broken through.

  
He’d whispered the truth into that small space between their pillows. As if doing so would soften their reality, somehow make his willing involvement less true.

  
After a flare of indignant rage, Billy had been pacified by Todd’s trembling, “He threatened to kill me when I tried to quit, ok?”

  
Billy had sunk back to the edge of the bed, stunned.

  
“Pat?”

  
“No, Vinny. He’s...merciless. I think even Pat is feeling in over his head. He’d never admit to it, but I can see the way he looks at Vinny. He’s scared, too.”

  
Billy had sat in the silence, shoulders rounded, his nervous energy stifled.

  
“Obviously I can’t go now, can I? Now that I know where the money is coming from. And I can’t just leave you working with some mad man.”

  
His hands had been chilled on Todd’s wrists.

  
“No, Billy, you have to,” Todd had answered emphatically. “If you bail on the trip now, it will look too suspicious. He’ll figure out that I’ve told you and...I just dread to think what he might do to you.”

  
Billy’s eyes had been filled with an odd combination of horror, distress and adoration. “What are you going to do about this, Todd?” He’d asked, his voice as quiet as Todd’s had been.

  
“I have no idea.”

And he still doesn’t.

  
But he’s watched Pat while Billy’s been gone. Looking for small tells, minute knits in the brow, small squints of his eyes, any hints that he too was starting to feel like things were going too far. Todd still didn’t like the guy, but he respected the cunning mind in that bald of his enough to know that he too was taking note when Vinny went too far.

  
Maybe soon he can reach out. Tentatively offer a detant, the chance to team up together…

  
“Todd?”

  
“Billy...” he sighs.

  
Todd is up from the table and into the entryway before Billy can even close the door to #11 on the swirling November wind outside.

  
Todd’s arms are around Billy’s neck before he even says another word.

  
He tucks his chin into Billy’s shoulder and breathes him in. “I missed you, too,” Billy hums happily, his hands clutched at the fabric over his shoulders.

  
Todd feels himself fill up again, his spine straighten. He brushes his fingers against Billy’s jaw and kisses him, slow and simple but full of feeling. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  
“Me too.” Billy smiles, then presses his lips nervously. “How are you? His true meaning is clear.

  
“Better now that you’re here.”

  
And for a minute, as Billy kisses him once more, Todd actually believes that might just be true.


End file.
